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[This post was originally uploaded on September 26, 2014. It has been updated below with new information on February 5, 2015.]

Have you ever wondered what a visual map of your Twitter network might look like? The realization of such Twitter topography was covered in a terrific post on September 24, 2014 on socialmediatoday.com entitled How to Create a Visual Map of Your Twitter Network by Mary Ellen Egan.

To briefly sum up, at the recent Social Shake-Up Conference in Atlanta sponsored by SocialMediaToday, the Social Research Foundation created and presented such a map. They generated it by including 513 Twitter users who participated for four days in the hashtag #socialshakeup. The platform used is called NodeXL. The resulting graphic of the results as shown in this article are extraordinary. Please pay particular attention as to how the “influencers” in this network are identified and their characteristics. I strongly urge you to click through to read this article and see this display.

I believe this article and report will quite likely spark your imagination. I think it is safe to assume that many users would be intrigued by this capability and, moreover, would devise new and innovative ways to leverage the data to better understand, grow and plot strategy to enhance their Twitter networks. Some questions I propose for such an analysis while inspecting a Twitter map include:

Am I reaching my target audience? Is this map reliable as a sole indicator or should others be used?

Who are the key influencers in my network? Once identified, can it be determined why they are influencers?

Does my growth strategy depend on promoting retweets, growing the population of followers, getting mentioned in relevant publications and websites, or other possible approaches?

What I would really be like to see emerge is a 3-dimensional form of visual map that fully integrates multiple maps of an individual’s or group’s or company’s online presence to simultaneously include their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn¹, Instagram and other social networks. Maybe a platform like the Hyve-3D visualization system² could be used to enable a more broadly extensible and scalable 3D view. Perhaps this multi-dimensional virtual construct could produce entirely new planning and insights for optimizing one’s presence, marketing and influence in social media.

If so, would new trends and influencers not previously seen then be identified? Could tools be developed in this system whereby users would test the strengths and weaknesses of certain cross-social media platforms links and relationships? Would certain industries such news networks³ be able to spot events and trends much sooner? Are there any potentially new opportunities here for entrepreneurs?

February 5, 2015 Update:

A very instructive and illuminating example of the power of mapping a specialized Twitter network has just been posted by Ryan Whelan, a law and doctoral student at Northwestern University. It is composed of US law school professors who are now actively Tweeting away. He posted his methodology, an interactive graphic of this network, and one supporting graph plus four data tables on his blog in a February 3, 2015 post entitled The Law Prof Twitter Network 2.0. I highly recommend clicking through and reading this in its entirety. Try clicking on the graphic to activate a set of tools to explore and query this network map. As well, the tables illustrate the relative sensitivities of the data and their impact on the graphic when particular members of the network or the origins and groupings of the followers is examined.

I think you find it inspiring in thinking about what situations such a network map might be helpful to you in work, school, special interest groups, and many other potential applications. Mr. Whelan presents plenty of information to get you started off in the right direction.

I also found the look and feel of the network map to be very similar to the network mapping tool that was previously available on LinkedIn and discussed in the August 14, 2014 Subway Fold post entitled 2014 LinkedIn Usage Trends and Additional Data Questions.

My questions are as follows:

What effects, if any, is this network and its structure having upon improving the legal education system? That is, are these professors, by being active on Twitter in their own handle and as members of this network as followers of each other, benefiting the professor’s work and/or law students’ classroom and learning experiences?

Are the characteristics of this network of legal academics any different from, let’s say, a Twitter network of medical school professors or high school teachers?

Would more of a meta-study of networks within the legal profession produce results that would be helpful to lawyers and their clients? For example, what would Twitter maps of corporate lawyers, litigators and public interest attorneys show that might be helpful and to whom?

3. See also a most interesting article published in the September 23, 2014 edition of The New York Times entitled Tool Called Dataminr Hunts for News in the Din of Twitter by Leslie Kaufman about such a system that is scanning and interpolating possible news emerging from the Twitter-sphere.